FILM

The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston presents Five Funny French Films, Friday March 25, Saturday March 26, Sunday March 27.

MFAH Films celebrates the uniquely French sense of humor with five recent films that have kept audiences laughing around the world. The “Five Funny French Films” series is part of the 2011 French Cultures Festival, presented in collaboration with the Consulate General of France in Houston, Alliance Française de Houston/The French Alliance, and the Texan-French Alliance for the Arts. The five films screen in the museum’s Brown Auditorium Theater from Friday, March 25 to Sunday, March 27.

On Friday, The French Kiss, a comedy about the trials and tribulations of hormone-fueled teenage boys, screens at 7 p.m.; followed by the romantic comedy Heartbreaker, in which a professional heartbreaker meets his match. On Saturday night, a pre-release showing of Potiche, starring legends Catherine Denevue and Gerard Depardieu, will screen at 7 p.m. and OSS 117: Lost in Rio, a retro spy comedy, will screen at 9:30 p.m. The stop-motion film released by Wallace & Gromit’s Aardman Studios, A Town Called Panic, rounds out the selection with a showing on Sunday at 5 p.m.

“We’re pleased to bring recent French films to the museum as part of the French Cultures Festival 2011, which takes place throughout the month of March,” said MFAH film curator Marian Luntz. “Our selection includes popular movies that were hits with audiences in France.”

Schedule of Screenings:

The French Kissers
Les Beaux gosses

Directed by Riad Sattouf
2009 (French with subtitles)
France
Color
90 minutes

Show Times:
Fri, Mar 25 7:00 pm

The French Kissers is a rollicking tale of a pair of teens who are far removed from the cool crowd, as they suffer the endless embarrassments and minor triumphs of their first sexual experiences. While Herve (Vincent Lacoste) and Camel (Anthony Sonigo) are forever fantasizing over their female classmates, they're rarely able to go as far as actually talking to any of them, other than to mumble a few incoherent insults.

But when Herve inexplicably catches the eye of the sweet but equally hormone-fuelled Aurore (Alice Tremolieres), he's pushed to choose between his first probable girlfriend, his unquenchable libido, and his best friend.

Remarkably fresh and smart, but most of all flat-out hilarious, The French Kissers is unabashed in its depictions not only of the humiliations of youth, but also the trials of parenthood.

Heartbreaker
L'arnacoeur

Directed by Pascal Chaumeil
2010 (French with subtitles)
France/Monaco
Color
105 minutes

Show Times:
Fri, Mar 25 9:00 pm

Charming, funny and effortlessly cool, Alex (Romain Duris) is a professional heartbreaker who—for a fee—can turn any husband, fiancé, or boyfriend into an ex. Alex has one ironclad rule: He breaks up couples only when the woman is unhappy. His latest job will put that rule to the test. The target is Juliette (Vanessa Paradis), a beautiful and independent heiress who is set to marry the man of her dreams.

With 10 days until the wedding, Alex has been hired by her father to carry out the most daring seduction yet, which runs the risk of being caught by ruthless personal creditors, angry exes, and Juliette herself. But worst of all, will Alex discover to his own cost that when it comes to love, the perfect plan doesn't exist?

Potiche (Trophy Wife)
(pictured above)
Pre-release screening courtesy of Music Box Films and Landmark Theatres

Directed by François Ozon
2010 (French with subtitles)
France
Color
103 minutes

Show Times:
Sat, Mar 26 7:00 pm

Catherine Deneuve stars in this comedy set in 1977, in a province north of France. Suzanne (Deneuve) is the submissive “trophy housewife” of wealthy industrialist Robert (Fabrice Luchini), who oversees his umbrella factory with an iron fist and is equally tyrannical at home.

When the factory workers go on strike and take Robert hostage, Suzanne steps in to run the company, with surprising results.

Written and directed by François Ozon (Swimming Pool), Potiche is based on the French stage play by Pierre Barillet and Jean-Pierre Gredy (Cactus Flower).

Potiche opens theatrically in Houston later in the spring.

OSS 117: Lost in Rio
OSS 117: Rio ne répond plus

Directed by Michel Hazanavicius
2009 (French with subtitles)
France
Color
101 minutes

Show Times:
Sat, Mar 26 9:30 pm

The pride of French intelligence, Hubert Bonisseur de la Bath—code name: OSS 117—has a new mission that takes him to the Bossa Nova Brazil of the 1960s. Teaming up with a sexy Mossad agent, he has to capture a Nazi blackmailer with an embarrassingly long list of World War II French collaborators.

The filmmaker combines a jubilantly retro score and production design with a 1960s-era cinematic vocabulary to send up Western arrogance, French chauvinism, and bigotry in general, all with biting satire and scathing wit.

“Naughty, silly, and wildly non-PC!” —Guardian (UK)

A Town Called Panic
Panique au village

Directed by Stéphane Aubier and Vincent Patar
2009 (French with subtitles)
France/Belgium/Luxembourg
Color
75 minutes

Show Times:
Sun, Mar 27 5:00 pm

Hilarious and frequently surreal, this stop-motion extravaganza offers endless charms and raucous laughs for children from 8 to 80. A Town Called Panic stars three plastic toys—Cowboy, Indian, and Horse—who share a rambling house in a rural town that never fails to attract the weirdest situations.

A perilously wacky chain of events ensues when Cowboy and Indian try to throw a barbecue for Horse. Based on the animated Belgian cult TV series (released by Wallace & Gromit’s Aardman Studios), A Town Called Panic is zany, brainy, and altogether insane-y!

Special thanks to Suzanne Fedak (Music Box Films); John Kochman (UniFrance); Kristen Lauerman and Carter Long (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston); Joan Patrick (L’Alliance Française de Houston); Delphine Selles (Cultural Services of the French Embassy, New York); Mabel Tam (Landmark Theatres); Patrice Vanoni (Cultural Attache, Consulate General of France in Houston); and Michael Zilkha (MFAH Film Committee cochair).

On view at the MFAH through May 23Impressionist and Post-Impressionist Masterpieces from the National Gallery of Art, featuring 50 of the finest paintings from the National Gallery's 19th-century French collection.

MFAH Films
The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston’s film program is the largest of its kind in the southwestern United States. MFAH first began screening films in the 1930s, and the Brown Auditorium, located in the Caroline Wiess Law Building and designed by Bauhaus architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, opened in 1973.

The auditorium immediately distinguished itself by having stadium seating 20 years before such design became the standard for American movie theaters, and because the Caroline Wiess Law Building is one of only two museums designed by this major twentieth-century architect. Marian Luntz, the film program director and curator of film and video at MFAH since 1990, continues the program’s tradition of showcasing a broad range of classic and contemporary Hollywood films, foreign language films, and premieres of independent films—many by local artists.

Often, critics, scholars, and filmmakers come to the showings as visiting speakers to give audiences a deeper understanding of movies and moviemaking. In 2005 and 2006, MFAH Films was named “The Best Place to See Vintage Flicks” by the Houston Press. In 2008, the Houston Film Critics Society honored the department with an award for “Outstanding Achievement in Film Programming.” At the 2010 Cinema Arts Festival Houston, Marian Luntz was honored for her 20 years at the MFAH.